On apage at Lucianne.com the lead of a Reuters article on the Democrats’ push to pass health care legislation was displayed. The piece is notably downbeat on the bill’s chances. But when you click on the link, you’re taken to a different story, which makes Democratic victory on the bill seem like a sure thing. It looks as though Reuters replaced the first, more pessimistic story by the second. I had to search elsewhere on the Web to find the first article. Here it is:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A combative President Barack Obama Monday sought to regain the initiative on overhauling the U.S. health care system after legislation slowed down in the U.S. Congress while he was abroad last week.

Key lawmakers Sunday said the legislation, President Obama’s top priority, was unlikely to be passed by Congress by the time they go on their August vacation, amid a debate among Democrats over how to pay for its $1 trillion cost over 10 years.

A higher income tax on the wealthy was an option offered Friday by an influential House of Representatives Democratic lawmaker, but it drew skepticism.
President Obama, just back from a week-long trip to Europe and Africa, used a Rose Garden ceremony to make his case for the health care revamp and to tell his critics they should not write him off too soon on the subject.

“I just want to put everybody on notice, because there was a lot of chatter during the week that I was gone: We are going to get this done. Inaction is not an option.”

“For those naysayers and cynics who think that this is not going to happen, don’t bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen,” he said….

That’s typical Obamaspeak, by the way: everything that opposes him is just “chatter” and should cease. There are not two sides, there is just one side.

And here is the second, upbeat (from the Democrats’ point of view) article, which replaced the first at the link provided at Lucianne.

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. President Barack Obama’s plans to overhaul the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry got a boost on Tuesday as Democrats in the House of Representatives offered sweeping legislation and predicted passage on schedule by August.

House Democratic leaders released their 1,000-page proposal which breaks new ground for the United States in healthcare by offering a government insurance option that would compete with private insurers.

A healthcare overhaul is considered central to the success of Obama’s administration, and he has pressed the Democratic-led Congress to move swiftly on legislation to provide insurance coverage for all Americans, control soaring medical costs and improve quality of care. He hopes to sign the bill by October.

The insurance industry, which has objected to the government plan, in a statement said the bill “would dismantle employer-based coverage.” The Pharmaceutical industry also said it opposed the House bill which it said would raise expenses for senior citizens.

Congressional budget analysts said the Democratic plan would reduce the number of uninsured by about 37 million and cost about $1.04 trillion over 10 years.

It is partially paid for with a planned tax on the wealthy that would raise $544 billion over 10 years, but vehement objections to the tax increase may force lawmakers to search for other ways to pay for it….

Obama urged congressional leaders to pass the bills in each chamber before the August congressional recess….

Obama’s problem is people are scared of the unknown and the healthcare plan is a complete unknown,especially who’s going to pay for it.Liberals always say rich people ae going to pay for this or that right before they come up with a broad based tax.Then you have people who believe that government can’t do anything right so why trust healthcare to them.Obama’s also lost credibility on the stimulus with people that were foolish enough to believe it to begin with.

Reply 2—Posted by: navybrat, 7/14/2009 7:27:52 AM (No. 5685796)

Nationalized healthcare/socialized medicine is known in Canada and England.

We have examples of government run programs; the DMV, IRS, social security, medicare, medicaid, veterans hospitals, welfare and the post office. It would be foolish to think that our healthcare would be run better. It will be worse because it involves our lives. In many instances people with cancer and life threatening illnesses where timeliness is essential, will die before treatment begins.

As some pundits have noted, Obama is promising a pain sandwich—increased taxes and less care. No wonder people are skeptical. I’m sure most Americans want to see DESERVING people get help with their health care, but not if there is nothing in it for them, the people footing the bill!

I think a lot of folks understand that ‘tax increases only on the rich’ will trickle down to them, due to the incredible deficits we are running for years to come. Health care reform will only make them worse.

Obama is so arrogant—everything he proposes is huge, massive and transformative. As if only The Messiah can wave his hand and make things happen. It’s nice to see him smack into the wall of reality.

The longer this debate on health care goes, the less chance of it passing. His approval is dropping, and the election is little more than a year away.

6 months into his ”reign” and people are beginning to say, ”hey, slow down!”

Reply 5—Posted by: samuraiching, 7/14/2009 8:19:18 AM (No. 5685933)

Reply 6—Posted by: Aggie57, 7/14/2009 8:19:50 AM (No. 5685935)

I will support Obama’s healthcare bill if he can promise that the entire population of the United States, including all members of Congress, their staff and families, will be covered by the SAME medical coverage.

Reply 7—Posted by: samuraiching, 7/14/2009 8:22:45 AM (No. 5685940)

Call your congress critters and ask them if they will be opting into the same health care plan that they are proposing for everyone else. When the inevitable reply of no comes back to you, tell them that’s how you will be voting for them in 2010.

Reply 8—Posted by: Shooter1002, 7/14/2009 8:28:17 AM (No. 5685954)

Obama’s plan is simply redistribution of wealth in the form of healthcare.

TAKE, by force, money from those who own and have earned that money, require health services from drug companies, hospitals and doctors at extortionate rates IMPOSED by LAW and distribute these services through the government allocation filter of ‘affirmative need’, and geographic voting patterns.

Reply 9—Posted by: Rake King, 7/14/2009 8:35:32 AM (No. 5685975)

Remember the campaign where GOPers said Obama was for big government & high taxes….seems like they (GOP) were right….weren’t they?

Reply 10—Posted by: Red Jeep, 7/14/2009 8:36:15 AM (No. 5685980)

If we throw away the system of health care we have had in this country we will never get it back.

To improve the system the answer may be get all government involvement we have now, out of health care.

If government regulations and mandates are a problem now, adding more government hoops to jump through is not going to improve anything.

I haven’t seen any wealthy people here flying to Cuba, Canada, England, France, etc for their liver, heart and kidney transplants because socialized medicine is so terrific.

Reply 11—Posted by: mrduc, 7/14/2009 9:02:16 AM (No. 5686058)

Remember when we were told that HMO’s were the way of the future and would reduce the cost of healthcare because everyone would become healthier through preventative care? You remember that whopper, don’t you?

The first step to lower healtcare costs is tort reform.

Reply 12—Posted by: Eheu Fugaces, 7/14/2009 9:03:15 AM (No. 5686063)

It is to be hoped that the entire Obama socialized “health” care program dies a quick but painful death, and is buried so deep that its fans will need a backhoe, a dragline and 3 dredges to bring it back to the light of day.

Speaking as someone over 55, I do not want to be denied lifesaving treatment by the clever means of lengthy bureaucratic “review”, and I do not want my life dependent on the someone else’s judgmentalism about my “quality of life”.

I do not intend to be a human sacrifice to Obama’s emotional issues with his grandmother.

Reply 13—Posted by: Felixcat, 7/14/2009 9:07:21 AM (No. 5686071)

Last night on The Mark Levin show, Mark played an excerpt of an interview Obama gave back in 2000 or so, discussing the Civil Rights Movement and the Warren Court. What Mark wanted his listeners to hear was Obama saying that the Warren Court didn’t go far enough with civil rights because it didn’t redistribute wealth, etc in response to the CR movement. Everything about him is all for one goal: redistributing wealth from the haves (white people) to the have nots (blacks and other minorities).

Reply 14—Posted by: M2, 7/14/2009 9:15:16 AM (No. 5686099)

Baucus…added, “I got the sense that the urgency barometer is going up.”

Why? Because the longer time passes, the more we know about nationalized health care and its horrors?

Once this is passed, it’s irretreivable. It’s the equivalent of the Black Plague; it will kill untold millions of people (delays in diagnosis and treatment) and incapacitate the rest financially (confiscatory taxes on “the rich”).

It will destroy the finest medical system in the world.

Obama and the Democrats want this because it hamstrings Americans and makes them slaves of the Democrat Party. Make no mistake that those chosen to run a nationalized health care system will have access to individual voting records, personal records, buying habits, tax records and these are the people who will determine your “eligibility” to receive care based upon how you have or have not helped the Democrat Party.

This is hideous and insidious. It cannot be permitted to happen.

Reply 15—Posted by: gilbi, 7/14/2009 9:26:37 AM (No. 5686133)

If he were really concerned about reducing the cost of health care, high on his agenda would be tort reform.

But, lo and behold, the trial lawyers’ millions in campaign contributions have bought his silence on this most crucial matter.

Reply 16—Posted by: Judy W., 7/14/2009 9:29:36 AM (No. 5686144)

Laura Ingraham is having a cow this morning over Obama’s word “chatter.” She says what he calls chatter is what normal people discussion of an issue in a democracy.

Reply 17—Posted by: LZK, 7/14/2009 9:31:16 AM (No. 5686150)

BO’s poll numbers are dropping and his “credibility” is fading into the sunset…. He has to “push” this through. He’s campaigning for 2012 and he can’t let this opportunity to garner the left’s support. THEY want socialized Marist health/care…..

BO’s losing the independents as they start to realize what they have done putting this empty suit in the White House—so he’s got to “stroke” the leftie Marixts….

Always remember—he’s on the campaign trail even when he’s at Camp David. Have teleprompter will travel….

Any survivor knows you don’t trust your life with people who have already spent every dime you own.

Reply 20—Posted by: nopcbs2day, 7/14/2009 10:23:30 AM (No. 5686337)

zero is in a hurry to get everything passed, since everything is a priority, reason being is he knows people are getting wise to the scam, the cheap veneer is coming off the pile of crap he has been passing as stimulus.

Ask anyone who supports nationalize health care how they came to the conclusion that this would be the best system. Ask them what other options they considered and what were the weak points that made them decide in favor of the Hillary/Obama/Kennedy plan. I only get blank stares from them. They favor it because they are robots and the Dems tell them it will be better.

# 20, I hate to be preachy, but I must correct you. The cheap veneer is coming off the pile of crap the useful idiots of this country elected last November.

Reply 23—Posted by: strike3, 7/14/2009 12:03:01 PM (No. 5686656)

You can’t “regain” something you never had. The dems have been dreading the introduction of the “healthcare” legislation because they know that their careers are at stake when it fails, and fail it will. Especially if they rush it through in the dead of night with nothing but Pelosi’s scatterbrained input as a basis for something that has been years in the process of developing. It if could be fixed, it would have been fixed long ago. Now that there is billions of dollars at risk for big medicine, big pharmacy, and especially for big lawyers like our own dear John Edwards, it isn’t going to happen in the way that most people have been led to believe. Welcome to reality, Barry. Congress will go on vacation, you will be embarrassed even more, and nothing significant will happen on healthcare. August my foot.

Reply 24—Posted by: irishcoins, 7/14/2009 12:21:09 PM (No. 5686695)

Gallup called last night re healthcare. Probably should of talked to them.

Reply 25—Posted by: Timber Queen, 7/14/2009 2:31:44 PM (No. 5687015)

I agree that tort reform is the place to start to fix our healthcare problems. Next, would be to get rid of the government regulations and the middle-man of medicare. As those ideas aren’t even articulated by the wimpy repubs, it will be a long fight to just get those points out in the public debate.

This Friday, July 17 the TEA Party movement is taking it to the congress critters district offices at the same hour, 9 am PDT and 12 noon EDT. The King and I will be driving 2 hours to participate outside Mike Thompsons office in Napa, CA.

For information go to the website for Tea Party Patriots or Tea Party Day.

Party like its 1776!

Reply 26—Posted by: rlwo, 7/14/2009 2:38:53 PM (No. 5687030)

I’m canceling my Medicare Part B. I’m not going to continue paying for it when I don’t need it, nor do I want it used to pay for Obama’s plan.

Reply 27—Posted by: chemman, 7/14/2009 3:05:14 PM (No. 5687089)

Quit fighting on the statist’s field of battle. We do not have a healthcare problem. We have the finest healthcare system in the world. The battle ground is money and how to pay for the care. As long as we fight on the field of choice of the statist’s we will lose and be moved into a single payer system. The only system that will bring sanity back is that we finance our own health care with take home dollars and buy a catastrophic insurance policy for hospitalization. We then remove the government from mandating what insurance policies cover and move too a completely free market system.

Reply 28—Posted by: fiscon, 7/14/2009 3:17:20 PM (No. 5687126)

Surely, my dear l.com editors, you jest. There is no way that any screaming coming from a home occupied by Mrs. Obama would be silent. Especially given her expertise in health care, shunting poor people to other hospitals to protect her $300,000 job.

The government already does a completely horrible job at managing our health care. Look at the FDA. Look at how many drugs have been recalled due to safety issues. Look at how many people have died or are permanently damaged by prescription medications. The FDA can’t even ensure that the studies submitted by drug companies “proving” their own drugs are safe and effective aren’t fradulent.

If we can’t trust our drug supply to be safe (and don’t even get me started on the food supply) then how can we trust the government to know what’s best for the rest of our health?

Heard on talk radio that Obama’s choice for Surgeon General doesn’t believe that doctors should make a profit.

What person would choose to work their a** off through high school, college, medical school, internship, residency and acquire hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans as well, if they couldn’t eventually make a profit. Not anyone I would want taking care of me, because that’s proof they’re an idiot.

Reply 30—Posted by: yodiepup, 7/14/2009 4:01:30 PM (No. 5687289)

Maybe its because it is nearing the end of the day, but the more I think about it, the more I know B-Ho will get his way. There isn’t anyone to stop him. He doesn’t care what polls say about the American people’s desires. He doesn’t have to care. Corruption has a strong grip on this country, a vise grip. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but it is best to be prepared when his cap n trade and healthcare agenda is passed and applauded as the work of our genius pancake.

Reply 31—Posted by: janjan, 7/14/2009 5:05:13 PM (No. 5687517)

This is a liberal pipe dream and if it passes Congress we have plunged ourselves into an extreme version of Socialism that we will never get out of. Government employees will make decisions about who will get health care and who will not and there will be no employee provided insurance of any kind. Taxes will go up on everyone—to the 70% level that the UK and Canada are paying. Wake up America.

Reply 32—Posted by: cryptogram, 7/14/2009 6:45:24 PM (No. 5687737)

Enough with this Federal healthcare reform nonsense. The STATES have a lot of power to affect health insurance for better and for worse. Let the states lead and succeed or lead and fail. Let the Feds stay out of it.

Mr. President, please be Commander-in-Chief. It’s hard enough to do that job well. Why not keep your eye on that ball?

Reply 33—Posted by: spengler, 7/14/2009 7:17:36 PM (No. 5687826)

Where’s the Birth Certificate, “Dunham?”

Reply 34—Posted by: Cedarina, 7/14/2009 7:46:36 PM (No. 5687889)

Once all medical records are on computers, you’ll never be allowed to appeal a denial of service or surgery. The govt. bean counters will disallow everything and anything they can. Doctors will be paid empaloyees of the govt. whose year-end bonuses will depend upon how little they cost the govt. health system.

People all over the world come to the US for their procedures to such places as the Cleveland Clinic, MD Anderson Hosp. in Texas, Hutchison Institute in Seattle or any other private services. They don’t go to England, France, Canada or any other places where there is nationalized health care, if they can afford to come to the US.

Reply 35—Posted by: nightvision, 7/14/2009 8:41:48 PM (No. 5687990)

What happens when the baby boomers start getting old and needing a lot of health care?

Let me guess. Big Brother will provide a nice ice floe. The elderly can climb on and be and set adrift, like the Eskimos used to do.

There’s no way Obamacare will want to pay to keep old, retired folks around. After all, they won’t be paying much into the government coffers, so they will have outlived their usefulness.

Reply 36—Posted by: woastew, 7/14/2009 9:08:48 PM (No. 5688030)

Does anybody know the answer to this: in all the talk I hear about raising taxes for the “rich”, I never hear about charging premiums for the healthcare that the 40 million now uninsured are going to get. Are they really talking about not charging any premiums to the 40 million who have chosen to be uninsured????????

[end of Lucianne thread]

- end of initial entry -

Paul K. writes:

“For those naysayers and cynics who think that this is not going to happen, don’t bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen,” said Obama of his health care plan upon his return from abroad.

In its arrogance, this sounds remarkably like former president Bush on June 12, 2007, predicting the passage of comprehensive immigration reform: “I’ll see you at the bill signing.”

LA replies:

Except that Obama’s statement is less arrogant than Bush’s!

Paul K. replies:

I was just thinking that he’s setting himself up for a fall. He may get his way with this, but I remain skeptical. BTW, Mickey Kaus has had some interesting things to say on the subject.

LA replies:

I should remember to read Mickey Kaus regularly. He’s always informed and interesting.